Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

I think this has been touched on before in other threads, but I can't find them at the moment -- I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts about the presence of Wind over the course of Lord of the Rings? I'm in a separate read-through from the Plaza one and drawing close to the end of the story, and I was struck not only by the frequent appearance of the winds but also their... varied roles?

Sauron and Saruman are both dispelled, after their death, by a wind from the west -- this I always interpreted as Manwe's judgement, rejecting their plea for mercy -- but the wind also comes from the south (hurrying Aragorn to Minas Tirith and dispelling the dark cloud of Sauron), the North (behind the wings of the Eagles, who say they will fly faster than it to reach the slopes of Mount Doom) and... every direction except the east, over the course of Aragorn and Legolas's eulogy for Boromir.

Are these... all Manwe, putting his thumb on the scale, as it were? Or is there something else happening with the North / South wind, besides the divine judgement which seems to come from the West?

(the East wind, too, is interesting -- Gimli refuses to sing of it. Amazing that an entire cardinal direction could be corrupted by Sauron)

I have very much noticed that the winds do tend to be very symbolic but I've never read anything about these being specific Valar was the cause of them but I honestly believe it is very likely that that is the case.

I am not sure if it was just Manwe, while Manwe is often considered the judge out of all the Valar, it is highly likely that it was a full house thumbing the scale. Given the North and South winds which seem less judgement and more 'help' I could see those particular ones being singular valar (Ulmo for example is very much aware of everything that happens in the water so the wind from the South could easily be Ulmo asking for that sort of a favour. where as the North is the Eagles and I could definitely see Manwe being for that.


Something that I think is the case here in terms of the East wind, is at this time there is no 'hell' there is no down/underground in the LOTR universe, so it would make sense that a direction namely the one where most of the enemies live or come from would make sense as becoming associated with that entirely. For example people don't speak of Hades or the underworld because they don't want their attention, Catholic mass is very similar in terms of not calling on the demons because they don't want the attention of those beings. So I feel that is more of a case of they don't have a 'down' so it moved to 'east'